Friday July 24 – Today we arrived in London after a rather rough and noisy flight. There were a number of children in our cabin section – and some of them didn’t appear to sleep. The chatter in the background and open window screens made it difficult to snuggle down for even a few hours. There was also just enough turbulence to ensure that any dozing-off was met with a jolt shortly thereafter!

Things certainly moved slower in the airport than we remember from the past. From the time we landed to the time we made it through customs and immigration, picked up our bags and finally got into our car it was a two-hour journey. We had booked a larger-sized automatic since we’ll be traveling with three people’s luggage and, if we had a standard, I would have to do all the driving. We were happy to see that a car was available – not always possible in the UK since automatics are relatively rare.

There are some features of the car that took us a bit by surprise at first…but likely are really good features for the driving conditions in the UK. When you stop for any length of time, the motor shuts off and then restarts when you take your foot off the brake. A bit scary when it first happens – especially on the motorway – but definitely fuel saving. The other feature is quite neat since you used to have to do it manually – the mirrors fold in when you lock the car. Because of the narrow roads, I’m sure this feature has saved the mirrors on many parked cars. We’ll certainly have our parallel parking skills down pat by the time we leave here.

It took about four hours to get to Cambridge as the weather was quite inclement and the traffic quite heavy. We arrived just at rush-hour and, of course, one wrong turn took us right through the centre of town – a controlled area, where one is not supposed to drive without a permit. Fortunately, we weren’t stopped and we made it to our B&B without incident.

Cambridge appears to be quite a walkable city – mostly just a University town – and like most UK cities now, discourages traffic in the downtown core. I think we’ll be doing lots of walking!

After a brief rest we walked out and found a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Tiredness overtook us and we were both sound asleep by 9:30pm.